Within the medical industry, there is a need for holding a variety of medical instruments for various purposes. A surgeon needs to be able to access medical instruments for surgery quickly, a dentist needs to be able to access his or her dental tools, and virtually all medical instruments must be placed within a holder during a sterilization process. Conventional holding containers may include a variety of bases holding insertable trays that have specifically-designed areas for holding specific tools. However, with smaller tools, such as small dental tools, it is frequently inefficient to store them in these containers, since they're prone to being moved around and jostled as the container is moved. This may result in a grouping of smaller tools in one area, which means that the surgeon or medical staff member must sift through the grouping to locate a specific tool.
Conventionally, medical instruments are often held in containers or trays with holes and grommets. The grommets may be positioned within the hole and provide a secure interface between the medical instrument and the hole within the container or tray. Often, the grommets are sized to match a certain shaft size of a medical instrument, and a container or tray may include a variety of different sized grommets, each specifically engineered and designed to hold one of a variety of medical instruments. These medical instruments have varying shaft sizes and it often becomes tedious to search for the appropriately sized grommet that matches a particular shaft size of the medical instrument. It is not uncommon for a medical tray to have fifty or more grommets, with a dozen or more different sizes. Thus, the time it takes to match a specific medical instrument to a specifically sized grommet may result in inefficient use of valuable time.
Further, many medical instruments are not suited for sterilization while being held in a grommet, either because they lack the necessary shape to be retained within the grommet or because they do not become fully sterilized when placed in the grommet since the grommet hinders the ability for a sterilant to contact all portions of the medical instrument. For instruments of these types, it may be necessary to support them with fixtures that retain the instruments with less contact than conventional grommets. With the multitude of medical instruments that require sterilization, it may be inefficient for a medical worker to find an appropriate fixture that will work with a specific instrument.
Thus, a heretofore unaddressed need exists in the industry to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.